which may happen to engage the attention of the public-will be freely discussed in these pages. Yet on the other hand, these pages will not be open for every man to maintain his own private opinion. The proposed magazine, is not to be a mere receptacle of essays and disquisitions from various writers of various ways of thinking on the subjects discussed, and with no special bond of union. It will claim the privileges of a corporation in the republic of letters, a person in law, with an individuality and character of its own, and with its own opinions to propound and defend. It will depend for its success, not upon names and standing of its writers, and the reputation which they have achieved in other efforts, but upon its own name and standing, upon the soundness of its own opinions, and the ability with which those opinions are commended to the understanding and affections of the public.

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It is proper, however, to say that there is no intention of reviving in this periodical the theological discussions in which some of the ablest New England divines have been so deeply engaged within the last fifteen years. The subscriber and the gentlemen with whom he is associated are of one mind on this point. They give no pledges respecting their course in case they find these discussions revived in other quarters. They only express their opinion of what is expedient as things now are. The discussions referred to have had their day; and according to present appearances, they have so far accomplished their mission, that they need not be revived. They have enabled the friends of evangelical truth to understand their own position better, and to defend it more clearly and convincingly. For this magazine to revive those discussions, would not only draw us farther into the field of scientific and metaphysical theology than we intend to go, but

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would divert the attention both of writers and of readers from other subjects, to which the progress of the age is giving more prominence and more of present importance. Spiritual Christianity is assailed by two opposite forms of misbelief. On the one hand a mystical, pantheistic infidelity, pretending to be more spiritual and more believing than Christianity itself-and on the other hand a picturesque, enthusiastic superstition, endeavoring to evoke and reinthrone the spirit of the cloudy past-are invading the public mind through all the channels of popular literature. young, the unwary, the imaginative, the speculative, especially at the seats of liberal or professional education, are approached by mysticism and by formalism, alternate or commingled, now in the form of philosophy, now in the form of poetry, now in the guise of history, and now in the costume of romantic fiction-at one time instilling a disgust for this prosaic, unpicturesque, unbelieving, level and leveling state of society, and at another time setting forth in bland accents the dogmas of the most rabid and disorganizing democracy. The intellectual character of the age is changed entirely within the last twenty years, and it becomes all thinking men to recognize the fact. Questions, simpler, plainer, more within the reach and grasp of the popular mind, than those which divide the metaphysical expounders of the evangelical system, are coming to be the questions of the day in every quarter. It is to these questions that our attention will be particularly directed.

Some readers however may be aided in conceiving the design of the proposed periodical, by a more distinct announcement of particular classes of subjects which will find place in its pages. To such readers then it may be said, that among other matters which have been named for discussion and which may be

considered as standing on the docket, they will find in the successive issues of this periodical, the following. 1. Ecclesiastical and civil history, particularly of New England. 2. Lives and characters of distinguished individuals, and especially of those whose influence on religion and theology has been greatest.

3. Various topics in jurisprudence and legislation. These will be discussed independently of party politics, and with reference to estabed principles of economical and political science.

4. Architecture, particularly of churches; and the fine arts generally, in their relation to the happiness and progress of society.

5. The peculiar constitution and character of New England society; festivals, manners and customs.

6. Poets and poetry; writers of fiction and their works.

7. Church order and discipline. 8. Education in schools and colleges.

9. Transcendentalism, mysticism, and pantheistic opinions, whether within or without the pale of the evangelical communions.

10. Romanism, Puseyism, and traditions generally.

11. Various topics in mental and ethical philosophy.

12. Millenarianism and prophetic exposition.

13. Plain explanations of difficult passages of Scripture.

14. Enthusiastical, fanatical and sceptical errors in religion.

The ends which the conductors have in view, will make it necessary

to adapt the work, not only in matter and style, but in size and price, to a larger class of readers than can be found among professional men, and persons of wealth and leisure. The New Englander will therefore be issued in quarterly numbers of 150 pages octavo, corresponding with the pages of this prospectus. The purchaser will thus have a yearly volume of 600 pages, convenient for use as well as for preservation. It is intended that each Number shall contain a critical survey of public affairs, and summary notices of the most important religious and miscellaneous intelligence; so that every successive volume shall record in a compendious form the political and ecclesiastical history of its own year, increasing in this way not only its interest and utility as a periodical, but its permanent value.

The editorial department will be under the control of a Committee of six gentlemen, including the Proprietor, who will hold themselves responsible for the general character and influence of the work, to those who have projected it, and through them to the public.

The price will be three dollars per annum, payable on the delivery of the first Number.

The Numbers will be published simultaneously in Boston, Hartford, New Haven, and New York, on the first of January, April, July, and October; commencing A. D. 1843.

E. R. TYLER, Proprietor. New Haven, Sept. 28, 1842.

As the New Englander, in accordance with the Prospectus reprinted on the foregoing pages, makes its appearance in the field of American periodical literature, it is natural for both writers and readers to look around with the inquiry whether there is any vacancy in the field, which this new work may reasona bly hope to occupy.

Omitting in this place all consideration of the daily and weekly journals, the religious and miscellaneous as well as the political; omitting also the notice which might be bestowed on two numerous classes of monthly magazines, those devoted to the literature of amusement and those devoted to specific religious objects or en terprises; we find among REVIEWS, the most respectable NORTH AMERICAN, grave, scholarlike, instructive, elegant, but on almost every question, religious or political, that can divide or agitate the public mind, studious ly uncommitted; and on the other hand the DEMOCRATIC, less erudite and dignified, but more attractive to a larger body of readers, for the reason that it takes up in almost every form, with enthusiastic zeal for its own side, the political questions of the day. The influence of the former is generally of the right sort, so far as it goes. It is doing well for literature. Its editor being a ripe scholar, and none but scholars being allowed to speak through its pages, it is constantly counteracting the tendencies to extravagance of taste and to shallowness of learning, which belong to the youthful genius of our country, and which are stimulated by sympathy with the revolutionary effervescence of the old world. The influence of the other is more equivocal; and, both for good and for evil, is to be far wider and more efficient than that of its more stately and honored competitor. Brilliant

with the light of genius; ardent in its advocacy of the principles which it espouses; powerful in its sympa. thy with popular feeling, and in the hold which it thus has on large masses of the people; reckless in its adoption of hasty speculations as established verities of moral and polit ical science, and in pushing out such speculations to extreme and revolutionary results; every one of its monthly utterances tells upon the character and destiny of our country, with a power which our posterity will feel but will not be able to estimate. Beside these, there is an attempt to revive the SOUTHERN ReVIEW, after some ten years of suspended animation, primarily—we may suppose--for the sake of vindicating and glorifying the "peculiar institutions" of the Plantation States against the public opinion of the world, expressing itself in "the literature of the world," and secondarily, for the sake of expounding and commending that policy by which the property of the South may domineer forever over the freedom of the North. The NEW YORK REVIEW, with its "conservative tone" and its hierarchical and English sympathies, is believed to have come to an end just one year before the date assigned by the prophetic Mil. ler for the end of the world. In this state of one great department of our periodical literature, it has seemed to us that, in respect to sound independent criticism on works of mere literature, and in respect to some questions of public policy and civil duty, the NEW ENGLANDER may find something to say from time to time which shall not be unworthy of attention.

Another class of periodicals is devoted to religious literature and theological discussion. The AMERICAN BIBLICAL REPOSITORY, in its own

province, is an honor to the AmeriModeled, from the beginning, after the type of German rather than English journalism, it is a rich repository of essays and disquisitions on various points in theology and the kindred sciences, with here and there a valuable contribution on some topic of general litera ture. No well furnished library of a clergyman can be without it. But its plan makes it a work chiefly for professional men. To act directly on public opinion-to discuss to-day the question of the day before the people at large, or before that portion of the people which takes an intelligent interest in the question appears to be no part of its design. Seeking to unite in its support as large a body of the clerical profession as possible, its pages are open for discussion on controverted topics from opposite parties; and being a repository of contributions from various authors in various connections and relations, each writing under the responsibility of his own name, the opinions which it publishes are not its own, but those of individual contributors. Its functions therefore in its proper department are analo. gous to those of the American Journal of Science, rather than to those of a popular Review, which aspires to be a censor of opinions and of parties, and to speak its own mind on whatever topic it undertakes to handle. Into the department which the Biblical Repository is occupying with so much success, it is not our intention to intrude. We heartily commend that work not only to ministers and students of theology, but to scholars in every profession. A work of that kind ought to be well supported by the clerical profession in this country, for it is continually adding not only to their reputation at home and abroad as an intellectual and learned body of men, but also to their actual attainments in biblical learning and theological sci

ence.

The BIBLICAL REPERTORY AND PRINCETON REVIEW, though chiefly occupied with ecclesiastical and theological subjects, is widely different in aim and conduct from the work which we have just been commending. It is the organ of the Princeton party in the Old School section of the Presbyterian Church. By no means deficient in learning, though sometimes blundering in logic; especially at home, as it ought to be, in the various erudition of theology; fluent in style, and rarely tasking the reader by any argument requiring profound thought or close attention; frequently brilliant in its wit, and frequently abusive; contemptuous in its manners, as might be expected of those who have learned to tremble at the objurgations of ecclesiastical dictators; it is a work likely to be read by those into whose hands it falls. When it heaps ridicule on the unfortunate Bishop Doane and his brother champions of Puseyism, its readers, greatly multiplied for the occasion, laugh till laughter produces tears, and till amusement at the folly of prelate, priest and deacon, ends in something like compassion for their sufferings. Accustomed to receive its theology by tradition from the elders, and not daring to presume that there can be any improvement on the triangles of Gomar and Turretin, it is incapable of sympathy with the devout and earnest endeav ors of American theology, from the days of the elder Edwards through the bright line of his successors, to "justify the ways of God to men," and to place the doctrines and claims of the evangelical system, as the Scriptures place them, in that clear light in which the soul, conscious of its own nature and of its guilt, is compelled to recognize their reality and their reasonableness. It gives no place, no, not for an hour, to such an idea as that the New England divines have done something, in their way, for theology. Its feelings are rather with those who hold New